The Postal Service on Friday published regulations that would restrict mail voting, its latest effort to comply with President Trump’s call to restrict the popular practice just months before the midterm elections.
In a 95-page final rule, the Postal Service clarified how it would carry out an executive order Mr. Trump signed in March, which sought to restrict mail ballots and to create state-by-state lists of citizens to help determine voting eligibility.
If the regulations are enacted, the Postal Service said that it would not deliver mail ballots in states that do not share voter data with the federal agency.
Under the new rule, the agency would review every envelope for compliance with the new standards before accepting ballots into its system. This review would include checking that the recipient was enrolled with the Postal Service to receive a mail ballot and that the ballot envelope meets certain specifications.
Mr. Trump’s executive order was largely blocked by federal courts this summer, and the Postal Service said in its rule published on Friday that it would “not take actions to implement the rule specifically for the 2026 election” unless the Supreme Court rules in the administration’s favor. In a filing to the court, the Justice Department said that the government would wait until it issues a ruling.
The Supreme Court is reviewing the issue and could rule at any time.
A Postal Service spokesman on Friday declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly made unfounded claims that mail voting is “cheating,” even though he has voted by mail repeatedly, including earlier this week.
The president has conceded that combating fraud is not the only reason to target the practice. In March, he told Republican lawmakers that passing a strict voter identification law cracking down on mail ballots, which Democrats now use more than Republicans, would “guarantee the midterms” for his party.
The Postal Service’s final rule is the latest instance in which the agency showed a willingness to comply with Mr. Trump’s desires to restrict mail voting despite multiple court injunctions. In the weeks since a federal court in Boston blocked Mr. Trump’s order, the Postal Service said in court filings that it is creating the infrastructure to collect voter data from the states. It also proposed a new privacy system to handle voter information.
Postmaster General David Steiner has been criticized by Democratic lawmakers for standing behind the Postal Service’s proposed rule despite its legal challenges. Mr. Steiner has said repeatedly, including in an interview with The New York Times earlier this year, that his agency would comply with court orders and would “absolutely” continue to deliver mail-in ballots.
But in response to criticism from the over 200,000 comments submitted to the Postal Service regarding its plan to restrict mail voting, the agency cast doubt on its traditional role of delivering mail-in ballots.
“States do not have to use the U.S. mail to conduct their elections,” the Postal Service said. To date, every state has a mail-in or absentee voting system in place, including for overseas and military voters. The practice is used by tens of millions of Republican and Democratic voters countrywide.
A central criticism raised in comments and affirmed by federal judges is the measure’s constitutionality. The Constitution grants authority over elections to states and Congress, not to the executive branch.
In its final rule, the Postal Service said that it is “fundamentally erroneous” to say that its plan to restrict mail voting is unconstitutional. “The rule does not recast the Postal Service as an election administrator, nor dictate the manner of elections in the states,” the agency said.
Instead, states “retain complete autonomy to determine the extent to which they utilize the postal system as an aspect of their elections,” the agency said. But if a state wants to use the postal system, they must follow federal mail regulations set by the agency because “the Postal Service is not constitutionally obliged to defer to” a state’s preferences for how to administer mail-in voting, the final rule said.
Multiple federal judges have indicated that the opposite is true. “The Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections,” a federal judge in Massachusetts wrote in late June. She added that Mr. Trump’s order calling on the Postal Service to regulate mail voting was “unlawful, null and void.”
It is now up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the Postal Service can put in place the new restrictions on mail-in voting.
Ann E. Marimow contributed reporting.
